On the plus side: a romantic setting, some nice cinematography and two attractive leads, commendably played by out gay actors. And about two-thirds of the way into the running time this lumbering movie almost threatens to take off and deliver some genuine emotion. But, sadly, it never really recovers from an extremely creaky start and a set-up so obvious that the ending can be seen a-coming from ten-minutes in. We're supposed to believe that Wyatt is a crash-hot business negotiator who really knows how to close a deal. Odd then that he pitches his plan to sell the family ranch to his mother in front of two employees, and with all the finesse of an elephant on ice skates. It doesn't help that he's suggesting the time is coming when Mom won't be able to manage the ranch, despite Mom being played by Andie MacDowell, looking much as she did in Four Weddings (with a few wisps of grey) and good for at least another forty years. Or that Wyatt has seemingly made no attempt to come up with any kind of business plan for the property when that's supposedly what he's good at - and what he does so effortlessly at the end of the film. We get that he needs to be a touch arrogant and selfish at the start in order to have some kind of character arc. But it's done in such a ham-fisted way that it's all but impossible to invest in him as a character. Dashing also suffers from a few of the usual problems with these wholesome Hallmark/Lifestyle gay rom-coms. Thirtysomething gay guys behave like blushing adolescents at their first dance, not like real men with attractions for other real men. It's all so chaste and twee that you wonder why the hell whoever is writing, producing and directing bothered to venture into the tricky waters of gay rom-com in the first place. Clearly, these movies are aimed at female romance fans more than at a gay audience, but you'd think they'd try for at least minimal respect for the gay men they're happily exploiting. Oh, well. Baby steps, I guess.
Review of Dashing in December
